Vollenweider on the project: "The Watercourse Way" expresses how water flows and stands for the way of the Tao. Taoism is a philosophical "thinking system", which originated in China in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. The particular power of water lies in its universal adaptability. Simultaneously gentle and yielding yet also strong and powerful, constantly in motion, flowing along peacefully or breaking its banks, overflowing before once again receding, water is an infinite matrix of lessons for all aspects of life. Andreas Vollenweider sees himself as a musical storyteller. Following his ideas, subjects and stories that make up the last thirty years of his work clearly reveal, how much inspiration he has drawn from the major and minor cycles of nature. Poetic imagery is reflected in the songs and its album titles, as in "Ripples in the Lake of Time", "Down to the Moon", "World in a Grain of Sand", "Dancing with the Lion", "Behind the Gardens… ", "Leaves of the Great Tree", "La Lune et l'Enfant" or "Under One Moon"…
This form of condensed narrative is also the central element of traditional Chinese music, as classical songs such as "The Moon Is Mirroring in the Pool", "Purple Bamboo Melody" or "Spring On A Moonlit River" clearly demonstrate. Vollenweider in so far pursues the ancient tradition of the imaginative musical journey, a process quite similar to that known to us from psychology as guided affective imagery. Music thereby functions as a secret door to the listener's interior realm, in which the consciously descriptive, narrative staging of sound, including the use of sound effects, provokes individual images and virtual scenarios, nurtured by the endless depths of the subconscious mind.
The performers:
Andreas Vollenweider; various harps
Daniel Kueffer; wind instruments, keyboards and accordion
Stefanie Peter (Steff la Cheffe); human beat box, breath and vocal percussion
Andi Pupato; water percussion, keyboard and sound effect
For the first time, Casper Obro, a young Danish lighting artist has been part of AVAF. With some kind of a "magic wall" a projector and a video camera, he was able to transform the theatre of the stage of the Shanghai Center into an enchantig visual world. The applause was well deserved, when the audience rewarded his visual waterworld.
Vollenweider: "Casper Obros fascinating visual contribution is very organic, natural and is a wonderful addition to our music. I very much hope that Shanghai was just the beginning of intense creative collaborations".
